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"Union Pacific has lost its way "

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  • Member since
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Posted by tree68 on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 10:16 AM

charlie hebdo
Safety should not be held hostage to making a profit. The system is flawed 

Absolutely no disagreement there...  Yet we see it every day.

LarryWhistling
Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) 
Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you
My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date
Come ride the rails with me!
There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...

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Posted by charlie hebdo on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 1:31 PM

tree68

 

 
charlie hebdo
Safety should not be held hostage to making a profit. The system is flawed 

 

Absolutely no disagreement there...  Yet we see it every day.

 

And what to do beyond  the usual "hearts and prayers" and a thousand bucks for the inconvenience?

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Posted by Erik_Mag on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 10:35 PM

CMStPnP

Very rare for an operations guy to get into the Executive Suite

FWIW, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, was an Industrial Engineer and picked because he was very good at handling the supply chain. Contrast that with Intel, which started off with a circuits guy, then a semiconductor process guy followed by an accountant. Intel was crushing the competition for a number of years as they had the high volume Process down, but recently have been falling behind TSMC with the advanced nodes.

The problem with railroads is that are a long term investment, in a securities market where most of the investment decisions are made by fund managers whose main interest is meeting next quarter's numbers. These managers generally prefer to deal with financial types like themselves.

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Posted by Gramp on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 11:14 PM

charlie hebdo

 

 
tree68

 

 
charlie hebdo
Safety should not be held hostage to making a profit. The system is flawed 

 

Absolutely no disagreement there...  Yet we see it every day.

 

 

 

And what to do beyond  the usual "hearts and prayers" and a thousand bucks for the inconvenience?

 

There *is* such a thing as  acceptable risk. 
The railroads I think still live in the Industrial Age mentality. It's not about the bogeyman of profit over everything else. If there's no margin, there's no mission. What's necessary is a shift in overall thinking. 

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Posted by BaltACD on Thursday, February 16, 2023 8:02 AM

Gramp
....

There *is* such a thing as  acceptable risk. 
The railroads I think still live in the Industrial Age mentality. It's not about the bogeyman of profit over everything else. If there's no margin, there's no mission. What's necessary is a shift in overall thinking. 

Human movement involves risk.  Walk and you can turn your ankle and fall.  In falling you may break bones in your body.  Fall while carrying a heavy load and the likelyhood of breaking bones is higher.  Move on beasts of burden and you risk falling further to the ground, with higher speed beasts of burden that distance can be multiplied by the speed of the beast etc. etc. etc. and in todays world of transportation we have 50/60 MPH railroad freight trains with car weighing 286K pounds and in some cases more hauling Hazardous commodities.  

Despite any and all efforts railroads make to prevent accidents - they are still going to happen as making the risk level of movement equal to ZERO is not possible in the world in which we live.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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